


brimstone

by enlaurement24



Category: Twosetviolin
Genre: Death, F/F, Falling In Love, Genderbending, M/M, Mild Sexual Content, Multiple times, Soulmates, Stalking, Suicide, War, also dying multiple times here it goes, burnt at the stake, colors???why, we're talking soft stuff only, yeah that's right but they're not called edwina (sorry my love) and brettany
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:02:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28321341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enlaurement24/pseuds/enlaurement24
Summary: For all that they make up one soul, Eddy's sweetness expands inside his mind. The split was never equal. Brett turns his head and bites him on the ear.(One life isn't enough for Brett, Eddy is the best soulmate and they find music in the middle.)
Relationships: Eddy Chen/Brett Yang
Comments: 5
Kudos: 29





	brimstone

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Apsacta](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Apsacta/gifts).



From one, two. More. And then the world.

From the earth, the sky, this light that gives him shape. Separate, too many limbs. More to touch.

From your chest love expands, sunflower field, and he turns to you reaching out fingers by your mouth. 

_Let's live._

***

Brett exists not so quietly for 14 years, torments his brother tenderly, wins, develops a deeply distressing attachment to his violin, and meets Eddy. It's easy, like their mismatched limbs, their awkward angles make up something bordering togetherness. A cumulative sort of effect.

It opens him up to different affection. The boba shop becomes airy. Brett stops hunting the taste of sugar, stays in his body while he inhales his tea. There's no dissatisfaction when he stops before the sweetness begins to burn going down his throat. He buys one more, not for himself. For once. Leaves it in front of his brother's door, doesn't think about it until the uncomfortable tint of shame nestles in his mouth as he hears a surprised sort of sound, some incredulity and suspicion. Brett is a good brother. He's never received complaints there. 

Brett doesn't look his brother in the eye when Eddy ends up sleeping on the floor of his room not six days after they meet. Brett is looking at his ankles, overly aware of the unconscious soft lump laid out by his own knee, and prays this is not the moment he needs to pay his dues. 

Eddy wakes up. Brett’s brother snorts from the open door. Brett looks at him involuntarily guilty with a feeling coming out of his bones and primal the way need is. 

Teeth, sharp, a familiar face from the mirror. He'll grow taller than Brett eventually. Softer eyes, like their mother's, new with the possibility of _blackmail_ and Brett is such a good brother that pride fills him to the roof of his mouth. _Good_ , he thinks. He forgets about Eddy for a second. Maybe piano. Maybe cello, or better yet, violin. The same game, if they have to play it. He wants things, bright things, for his brother, things best fought for. Brett wants to crush him like egg shells. 

'Cool haircut, dude' and Eddy's barely conscious but he flushes to the top of his ears, looks down to somewhere left to Brett's knee. It might be the first time when his brother wants to take from him, true intention sharpened into purpose. Neither of them see Brett's stomach bleeding excitement inside his belly. Eddy's redness makes him aware of his own gums and his brother's wink as he leaves sends Brett into contained giggles.

He doesn’t deliberate on grabbing Eddy's hair loosely, like he doesn't mean it. His ear is still hot when Brett's pinkie brushes against it.

***

There is someone inside Brett's apartment. He's not very surprised at it. 

Two months since he's first noticed him, certainly more since it actually started. One month of allowing it, of not closing his curtains at night, of stopping at crosswalks to feel anxiety like heat rising off his skin from up close. One day since he maneuvered through the packed, filthy subway car to end up pressed chest to chest with the weird dude following him. He smelled like oranges and Brett lost his nerve, couldn't look up. A heart panicking against his, closer through their suit jackets, a shift as the train slowed down and a hip against his, bony, higher because the dude was too tall for the deep color he flushed. He felt young, like an embarrassing crush, and warm. Brett was a little charmed. A little too old for this. 

Too busy staring. The train had stopped, pulling Brett backwards abruptly, too relaxed, too aware of his breathing. He didn't reach out at all. The dude got him by the elbow, didn't grab him, palm cupped softly at the point of contact and his other hand grasped Brett's left, brought it up between them for leverage. Held him there, with his big mouth O-shaped, shaky breath on Brett's knuckles whitened from pressure. 

_Oh, hello_. And then only the red-hot strike of comfort from being _touched_ , for once. 

Brett had wondered after, worried almost that it might have been too much for those wide wet eyes, that he'd given up. Nothing to do but go to work as usual. Crappy romance drafts, harping authors behind deadlines, try not to cry as he begs the fuckface that's the editor-in-chief to at least read that girl's sci-fi, hit his elbow on the side of his too small cubicle. Avoid handshakes. Watch the assholes in News pretend they know where to start decrypting a cipher. Rinse. Grey and rainy, and loud. Too many people, too little like Brett. No one to see him. He touches hands with a woman in the market, over a cereal box, and the hairs on his arm stand up all the way to his shoulder. Replay. 

No one to see him, except. 

He still thinks _oh, hello_ as he walks into his hallway and closes the door behind. Key and all, since his stalker hasn't bothered. It feels overdue. A little exciting, and Brett is more curious about the _why_ of it and not the _how_. He's aware of the issue there.

Nothing seems to be touched. He's here for Brett only, and dishes, apparently. The kitchen is impressively clean, possibly cleaner than it's ever been, smells of oranges. The cupboards have been wiped back to their original lime green and Brett tries hard not to cringe at all his embarrassing red pots taken out and arranged on the counter tops. (Doesn't think to that time a few weeks back when he'd cooked all night just he wouldn't set himself on fire, doesn't think about the ache in his jaw as he cried soundlessly. The advantages of living at ground level, the pretty profile that he could catch by the side of his window, round cheeks and the sharp curve of his neck as he leaned his head against the wall. Wetness at the corners of his eyes.)

New York is scary, with all the serial killers lately, but Brett has nothing at this point, least of all self preservation instinct. No one, above everything. Everything matters only relatively. 

He worries for a second that he might be one of those really weird ones, that he's in the bathroom chewing on Brett's dirty underwear. Could be entirely possible, though the extra pair of shoes by the entrance says otherwise. Shiny and clean, a deep brown, but thrown in a hurry. Young and unplanned, unintentional. It's more likely that he's in Brett's bed, maybe, if he leans into that kind of thing. 

It's something about the distance. Knowing he was near, and paying attention, and that Brett's somehow worth all of that. It was good on the subway too, closer but not too much, it edges disappointment now that he's lost control. Brett isn't sure what he's allowed to want from this, beside coming out of it alive. He doesn't like his stalker, but he hasn't been picky in a while, and it's nice to be thought about. 

He knows he's imagining the orange smell. 

The door to his bedroom is in the same position like he left it this morning, which is equally frightening and sweet. Closed, handle slightly lower than the horizontal. When Brett opens it there's a high squeak, clumsy clacking of teeth to cut it short. Just the mattress and the wall mirror the apartment had come with, it's disconcerting to see him and his reflection somewhere in periphery, on his left. His three cacti, one flowering, in painted pots. 

He's on the floor by the window, curled up in the far corner of the room with Brett's pillow squeezed to his chest, and his mouth remains open like maybe he didn't mean to get caught, and there's an intact orange on the windowsill. 

'Fuck.'

***

He kills you, some lives. He tends to forget more than you do, and if the time allows it so, he kills you out of duty, out of competition, before you can touch him, once just to see what happens, while you kiss. 

Just the once. 

You yell at him the next time, barely twelve, and a girl at that, she comes into your kitchen to be trained as a maid. She knows it's you as soon as she sees your eyes, and laughs a resigned sort of sound before she grabs a knife. 

You hold her while she dies, small hand in your wrinkled palm, and you still remember being burnt at the stake together. This is not the worst yet. 

You die on your own, come into a new life where he's older than you by a few minutes. 

***

It's difficult, retaining the last personality into a new life, and a body that doesn't quite bear his name. It comes in bits and pieces, but Eddy's attached to consciousness this time. Brett remembers him before he can walk, probably, or it feels so, at least. 

It's painful, for the most part. He grows up in a wealthy family and he tries his best at an approximation of a child. He's obviously off, but he's also the fourth son. Invisible, inconvenient at best. 

There's a pull between them, too slow for the way Brett craves for Eddy, and he tries to be good and inconspicuous. He talks to the servants, keeps up his studies, he goes out at night with the daughter of his mother's attendant and learns slowly all the dark corners of the town. Touches an instrument for the first time in all his lives, a feminine thing, sounding sharp off the dark brown picks tied to his fingertips. In the night light they glint blood-red and his laughter rises in the summer heat when they go flying with too much pressure. Eddy settles heavy somewhere along his spine, hot touch to ground him as he charms information out of everyone, as he kisses it out of his lonely calligraphy teacher's mouth, off the skin of a young merchant selling fabrics and flowers. 

Brett steals from him a pouch of sunflower seeds and a lie probably, a memory of a man Brett's age training as a physician, with soft eyes and a softer mouth. With goodness dripping from his fingers. 

Eddy’s inclined to that, but Brett doesn't have a name to ask for, much less a face. (The trick is in the eyes, and the smile. It flares like cinder, his soul, a mellow red along his gums that Brett's died for, before. Will die again. They have unlimited time.) He grows and his cage shrinks. 

Everything is stifling, his clothes with too many layers, too bright after the filthy grey of what he remembers, hunger and fire, edges of a broken language growled over the bloodied edge of a curved sword, cold water, colder skin in the hull of a ship. Different kind of binding, but here it presses over his shoulders and pushes down on him, the pretense of it. The house spreads out with more buildings than he cares to number, fields of flowers and rice outside the gates. Clean. There's art, contained beauty to wrap around pretty words, it chokes him up almost, meaning lashing out like twisted, sharp vines. Brett lays down at night with his left extended outside his bedspread and searches with his fingers the give in the wooden floor, the tiny space where he can stick his nails until it hurts. He misses light brown hair, the dumb curl in the fringe. Expects the tickle of it as he exhales, and the orange tint behind his eyelids that Eddy's proximity induces. 

Brett is trapped. Raised like a doll and sold like one, one summer day. Not even properly sold, but given in apology. 

His wife laughs when she sees she only comes up to his elbow and she's the second born in a clan barely removed from the royal family. She has thin red scratches along her forearms, like a child. Chin-Sun. The Germanic tongue living inside Brett's memories tells him it means something, though he understands easier once they're alone and she takes his hand solidly to guide him through tiny spaces, truly invisible, between the walls of the compound, and out. Away. 

They run. The smell of sunflowers hits him first, so he closes his eyes, squeezes her hand harder, trusts her muffled giggles. The scratch of tall stalks against his exposed neck, the rise of his pulse as it rushes to meet that hard touch. When they stop, Brett's head lolls back in relief. Heated air fills him up, yellowish dust in the dips of his teeth. 

_Let's live._

The sky opens wide above him. The wind picks up to cut at his dry mouth. 

Sunflowers still green keeping warmth between their bodies. They bow down towards the earth, towards Brett's face and there's a prickling urge behind his eyes to tilt his head up and kiss them. Eddy's soul feels bubbly from the inside. Brett wants only him, and this. 

Once it passes, Chin-Sun's hand falls from his and she breaks off in half the biggest stalk she can find. Her palm bleeds but her eyes shape into crescent moons as she laughs and whacks Brett with it over the thighs, then disappears into the wall of sunflowers. The ground burns warm under Brett while he waits her out and he eats a handful of petals that she throws at his face. 

He has to carry her piggyback when daylight breaks and it occurs to him that Chin-Sun is whole on her own, with her long straight hair, that one strand chopped off somewhere near her ear, with all the cuts and bruises and her thorn dirty dress. 

They live. 

There's a pond that looks like a lake in the middle of the compound, with a house built at the edge of it, that belongs to Chin-Sun only. She doesn't allow servants in and ropes Brett into cleaning, and cooking, and stitching, and braiding her hair. She brings in frogs to pet, and a guzheng, after Brett confides in her that he knows how to play, half a truth, laughs in delight when she tries it out and almost gets a pick stuck in the floor. She likes to touch his face. Or, she likes his face, and how it looks with red tint for his mouth. Brett understands after a while. She keeps dressing him up, but he's not a doll anymore. 

_With a different soul, maybe_. With a different soul, he could maybe love her, even as she doesn't need it. 

It's the first life that Brett allows himself to live outside yearning. He breathes in without the copper taste of being halved. And then Chin-Sun doesn't want to roll out of her bedspread one morning, and the day after, and she burns up at night. 

The physician has bunny teeth. 

It's not the first time when he attends to Chin-Sun and she loves him so fitfully that her fever goes down just by seeing him. She looks between the two of them, smiles with too many teeth as Brett slumps against the man's upper arm with a content sigh, can't not, fundamental need. Eddy flushes down to his hands, where he's feeling out Chin-Sun's pulse, doesn't say anything, except a tiny whimper as he tears himself away from their door frame to leave. 

That night Chin-Sun asks, and Brett talks about how it felt to be whole, in the beginning. About living, and how he's never had bunny teeth until now. She's not very impressed, though she tries to be gentle when she tells him that Eddy's tinted orange while Brett leans more into yellow. He knew already, that the split was never equal. 

Her hand leading him to the open field always feels the same, with or without Eddy waiting there under the moon. 

Chin-Sun loves them, but doesn't need them. 

His hand is cold in the summer air, too big for Brett to hold, so he only grabs Eddy's fourth and fifth fingers and squeezes them tight, pulls him forward through the sunflower stalks. He trips on the other side, nothing but green, a forest in the distance and open water beyond, and he goes tumbling down, brings Eddy with him. Above him, this new body that fits Eddy better than Brett's does, hotter than the ground underneath. 

It takes a while to get up. They live. 

***

His music makes him better. It chose him, in the beginning, and Brett grew into it, and it fills him until it spills from his skin. 

He takes, feeds something. He wants attention. Praise that he can brush off like his fingers have never bled and eyes on him, pretty. He craves hardness, the scrape of the skin on his knees, on the heels of his palms, that he needs to sacrifice for music. It starts with his violin, then expands. He wins when it's easy, wins by an embarrassing edge when it's so hard he thinks he might just die. His room spins the second he's in bed, and sleep feels foreign. 

He wants differently, from Eddy. Isn't sure what more, because Eddy has already dug into him and settled mellow between Brett's ribs. Mirror in mirror, he wants. 

He thinks maybe this is just how care feels like, but then he hears Eddy's voice coming from his brother's room one morning. Eddy's voice and not, it sounds flat, louder than usual and he speaks with a disjointed cadence about _bow control_ and _choosing repertoire_. It comes out painfully boring. Brett would go right in to tell his brother to fuck off for not asking _him_ in the first place, but he's been listening by the door for a while and Eddy's voice is still raspy from sleep and it's morning. 

It's morning. Brett is at an awkward age. He takes a cold shower, stays there for too long, until Eddy's about to pee himself and begging. The restraint feels familiar. 

It keeps happening. Eddy gets dared to wear a dress in music camp. His legs bend weird and the straps keep falling off his shoulders, and his hair is too long, it curls softly at the base of his neck. He sits down by Brett for the rest of the game with their bare knees touching, Eddy's laughter waving closer until his arm is over Brett's shoulders and his open hand settles in the middle of his chest, holds on stubborn through unbearable tickles when Brett's fingers push under his ribs trying to get him off. They end up the same shade of red and Brett has to sit with his knees up by his chin for a good while. There's a pinkie touching his foot all night. 

Brett dreams of sunflowers and salt water sometimes. Then Eddy's mom decides that she loves him too much and Brett only dreams of Eddy. The idea of going on to the con alone makes him viscerally ill, like he's spread too thin eaten up by music, like he'll never see Eddy again and the empty space by his side feels worse than bleeding. Brett misses the dumbest things, his hair, his ugly snorts, his Bach and the evil in his competitiveness, how it comes out biting from that big mouth, all of his inadequacies spilled willingly into Brett's hands, he takes and it's still not enough. He's running out of time, doesn't know what for, out of music in a way, because the split in his affection was never equal, between his violin and Eddy. 

Time stretches. He barely breathes between his admission and the day Eddy comes to brag that he got into med school. Dies there for a bit, sways unsteady and he has to brace himself on Eddy's shoulders, air rushing out of him from a hug not tight enough that makes his ribs crack. 

'I got in. I can come with you to the con now' and Brett goes orange with relief, it echoes and doubles. That day in maths tutoring, something about Eddy's eyes. 

Brett has him now, and doesn't, all at once. He shares Eddy with music above everything, and with people, and in the breaks Brett doesn't have to fill with words he figures Eddy is better shared. 

Sometimes, when they're out in the summer sun, Brett falls behind just half a step so that he can see Eddy turn around for him. At the right angle, light glints off his eyelashes and Brett tastes red in his mouth. That day in maths tutoring, something about watching Eddy from afar. 

Eddy’s smile when the bottle stops spinning to land on Brett, barely passes Alex, mild curse that means he has to fit himself and Eddy's offensively long limbs in a dorm closet for seven minutes. They sit down folded so that Jordon can close the door with definitive disappointment. Overdue games at half excitement, too old, too much music between them.

It's fine, of course it's fine. Brett has to stretch his neck uncomfortably to reach Eddy's mouth, and he sort of kisses bunny teeth first, out of surprise, until Eddy's knees fall open for better access, give into Brett's hand digging into his left thigh. 

Outside this space, someone peels an orange. 

***

You want to forget. 

When you finally do, he watches you across the church and you can't pinpoint the source of your flushing, and you worry everyone will see it for what it is, because you're hot to your knees, exposed. You figure it out two lifetimes later, across years as it comes rushing back, that tiny kid dressed in yellow pressing you into the church wall savagely until sweat soaked through the back of your white shirt, that filthy Portuguese out of all things. God would definitely not condone. 

There's pride at the back of your tongue, that you can fall in love with him outside your bonds, that he remembers when you do not, and you're enough, one life of you, so that he doesn't burden you with what you should remember. You forgot, still lived through sunlight, through other souls, and lemon trees. 

Brightness. In the beginning, mellow power and sweetness. From two, one. His soul feels sticky on the inside, demands the skin off your tongue, once you acquire one. 

Between the world and your half, you can't choose which to forget. Mirror in mirror, you crave both. 

***

In reverse, it happens like this. 

The fire climbs up to their feet, but it doesn't hurt anymore, the smoke inside their lungs swimming, waves to carry them to safety. There's blood somewhere in the smell, it blackens and she mourns blonde hair before she mourns her own bones. It's alright that they're back to back because she hasn't been able to see in a while and so she only feels Edna's hand through it, soothingly cold against her fingers, skin to skin, melting into each other. Become one. 

Bryanne blinks. 

The open sea, thin moon just before daylight. She could fall asleep, with her hand stretched out over her head, searching out pebbles. The sand is warm and she _hates_ all the layers of her dress. Her feet are buried up to her ankles, but Edna still trips over them as she comes back to the shore. She's had better foresight so she's left only in her undershirt hanging heavy with water over her bony shoulders. Bryanne can't look for too long, or her ears will catch on fire, doesn't quite need to, when there's a hand over her eyes and knees on each side of her middle, poking at her bottom ribs. 

Edna's palm drags down, and her thumb catches on Bryanne's mouth. It's salty, the shape familiar, imprint at the back of her tongue. 

She wants Edna all the time, and it's embarrassing, how she's never wanted anything else. Thighs squeezing her, she can't push up, harder, long hair tickling at her neck, against yellowing bruises. Sure, slow weight that she can squirm against, the drag hot, breathless. Daylight breaks. 

Edna tastes of liquid orange in the salt water. 

Bryanne blinks. 

'What happens now?' 

Bryanne shakes her head, then figures Edna can't see her in the dark, surely not from where she is, face pushing against her upper arm, pouting. 

'Can't run. This happens everywhere. If we run here, it's like we've been caught chanting naked at midnight in the next town over.'

'I should have never come to you.'

'We're still living. They'll have to be very creative with the torture to match what I feel when I tickle you.' 

'I wanted more time, we never have enough time.'

The two cats that Bryanne's been feeding are walking over the roof like upset geese, save the quaking. She doesn't quite understand what Edna's saying. 

Bryanne blinks. 

She doesn't mean to do it. She's tired and she's been clenching her teeth so hard during Mass that something must've cracked. Some nights Edna's voice from outside the door seems less, it carries less, and it's worse, it makes Bryanne strain to hear it, pay attention. There's a body to fit those sounds, the shape of a neck, distracting. The restraint feels familiar, until it doesn't. 

She likes blonde hair, what of it. 

Edna falls inside mostly, when the door gives way from under her, she makes a squeaking sound muffled into Bryanne's shoulder. It's not entirely unwanted, still ringing soft in the air between them, it makes Bryanne mad. 

She doesn't mean to do it, but Edna kicks the door closed and opens up grinning for her mouth. She doesn't know how this goes, only wants, from her stomach to her throat, a crushing kind of need. She can't breathe. Something whiny comes out of Edna's throat and it's so much worse. Better. Her sight goes fuzzy around the edges. 

The dip of her neck. It's hard breaking away from her mouth, but Bryanne knows it viscerally, that it's the dip of her neck where her mouth has to be. It hollows on a sharp inhale, enough that she can fit her tongue there, drag up slowly, sticky. Edna's voice breaks up into breathy, uneven noises, drawn out peaks, and it feels like Bryanne's licking at the sun, a little painful. The knobs of her spine, the change in angle when Edna pulls her closer. 

It must have happened from that first night, her words, something about her eyes. Later, every day, the shiny sea pebbles at her window, and the way her hands are bigger, and how it rises against her teeth, the urge to be good. 

Bryanne blinks. 

A blonde woman walks into her home and Bryanne thinks that God is a fickle thing. 

It takes too long to gather her brain from where it melts on the floor, too little because her guest seems to realize the issue with barging through closed doors in the middle of the night and she starts retreating red to the roots of her hair. Bryanne barely catches her by the elbow two steps out of the house, pulls her back in ready to beg, _thinkingthinkingthinking_ , something, _anything_. 

It goes like this. It's been months since Bryanne's father and brother have disappeared and no one knows yet, won't ever know, if she can help it. She hasn't killed them, not for lack of fantasizing about it, but she's worked hard to keep it a secret until now. It's about bread. She's making bread. 

She's making so much bread that the fucking town hasn't noticed yet that she's now their baker. The sleeves of her dresses are becoming a problem, too tight. She'll be skinned for this if she's found out. The blonde misfortune is looking around curiously, probably getting to the correct assumptions, that she's caught Bryanne in her underdress sweating like a donkey, trying hard to keep the five earth ovens going and shaping dough, completely and inexplicably alone. A small _oh_ comes out of her when their eyes meet. She wishes she wasn't barefoot. In the light of the fires her irises burn orange. 

'I won't tell on you if you don't tell on me.' 

It occurs to Bryanne then, the weirdness of the situation. That there's a girl in her home, at night, when there shouldn't be, in any polite manner. That she's being talked to with an accent. Her hair isn't covered, only braided loosely on her back, with lighter strands through, and flowers. 

'How old are you?' because Bryanne is still thinking, something glaringly out of place. She's never seen her guest before, which is impossible. All women go to Church, every Sunday, they all pray as they should. She would've noticed this one. 

'I said, I won't tell on you. Come on.' Thinks for a beat and says 'Seventeen. I'm Edna.'

'Get out.'

'What?'

'Get out, right now. Woosh.' 

The seamstress. The seamstress and her possibly cursed daughter that never comes out of their house and goes into the ocean on nights without moon. The last thing that Bryanne needs right now is suspicion around her, panic making its way up her arms, who knows who's already seen her coming in, who's seen _them_ , Bryanne pulling her inside. Goddamn. 

Edna's eyebrows draw together. She has a big mouth, and a dip in her chin, and she doesn't seem to be moving towards the door, only crosses her arms, points her nose to the window. 

'If you're going to summon the devil at night, then you should at least learn to draw the curtains closed all the way. It's not my fault I'm here.' 

It's fine. It's fine, Bryanne is half a head shorter than her, not very much murder-inclined. She points to the door silently. There's a quiet _boo_ as Edna goes past her, and a pull in the middle of Bryanne's chest, like she's not taking in enough air. The door opens and closes and she's safe. Barely saves her bread from blackening. 

Her cauldron though, pushed further out into the room and out of sight, ends up smoking. So much for the rain enchantment. 

***

_I love you._

It's not the first time Eddy tells him. It's not even the most charged one, he's been told before, with his violin in hand, through his phone, through being missed. That very good one time when he'd held off coming just because Eddy asked it of him, and called him _love_. He can still taste that. 

It's not the last time either, realization slowly fracturing behind Brett's tired eyes, it echoes, ten times, twenty, a hundred, thousands, he crumbles into yellow dust in the middle of the night of another life. Eddy keeps him standing, starts crying once Brett says it back, he shakes with it unashamed. The world realigns, but Brett's phone is still recording, the way Eddy squeezes him, and those words, brimstone before fire. 

This life is important too. His green hoodie, Twoset. His brother. They've lived everything else, and they have time now. 

He hasn't remembered in so long, he can feel all the people inside him settle slowly. He wonders if Eddy knows already, as they break away from each other, but he's fuzzy with tiredness, under his skin, they'll melt if Brett doesn't focus. Impossibly, he wants his violin. He looks at Eddy, his wide eyes, and decides five days of playing through their hands cramping up isn't the worst thing they've ever done. Doesn't stop to think what worst means. 

He doesn't quite understand how Eddy still feels new. He must be staring, so he gets kissed until he's back into this body, those hands on him, one at his hip and the other under his jaw, thumb over his pulse point, too much. Brett still wants. 

He's allowed to want, and to touch, and they have the correct number of limbs between them that they don't become lonely. It's not the first time they have music, but it's never been like this, something to stitch their patchy skin with, and hold. Eddy's music loves him closer, but that's alright. They have time to grow into it. 

They have all the time, and Brett's left to crave the vanilla ice cream he's had two lives ago. He hopes Eddy doesn't remember, doesn't resent him this need for the world. 

They live, on the stage, and Eddy must know. They play Navarra. 

***

You never find him, some lives. He's died already, or he's too far and the pull doesn't have time to work. There's a sort of relief in that, when you know you've died separately too many times. 

The reset is simple, but you remember, because you remember everything, unfairly so, he'd said _let's live_. You watch him become creative with it, desensitized, drowning and knife and rat poison and falling, the reset, until you can't watch anymore, can't follow him into the next life. 

You hope he stops remembering. 

***

When he bows, Eddy cradles his violin all the way up to his chest. It feels fundamental, and Brett glows from the cheering filling up the theater, fundamental like the back of his hand touching Brett's sweaty forehead. 

The pull is hot between them among all these people, heavy, Brett can't focus but doesn't want to either, just craves, on the edge of whining. He's gone too hard on the start of Tchaikovsky. 

They're home and homesick, in Boston. It hangs heavy over Eddy, and they keep smelling smoke, don't talk about it. They don't sleep the night before they leave. Brett’s brain is dripping out of his ear, foot flat on his closed violin case on the floor to make sure it's there. He'd slide out of bed, if not for Eddy's weight on top of him. 

Sometime before daylight, Eddy says 'this is enough for me' and he unsticks himself off Brett's chest, settles next to him shoulder to shoulder warm through their shirt sleeves. For all that they make up one soul, Eddy's sweetness expands inside his mind. The split was never equal. Brett turns his head and bites him on the ear, pulls to stretch it out a little, doesn't let go and speaks with his mouth full. 

'What is?' 

'This life, all the others. I want to be together.'

'But we are.'

Eddy makes a frustrated noise, muted in his elbow, he breathes harder when he comes back out. 

'You know what, you deserved that cockroach in your bubble tea.'

***

Brett thinks he might die here, but he can ignore it for a while. 

Everything feels muted through the smokescreen, vague shouting in the distance. He has dirt on his gums and his hands are caked in blood, his ears keep ringing. He's a little out of his body, doesn't quite know where he's come from, though it doesn't matter so much. There are bodies around, he's busy. 

His bag weighs double as he crawls, and he hopes nothing breaks inside, he's been asking for adrenaline for so goddamn long. It must be day, or close to it, with the way the smoke colors reddish orange all around. That, or there's a big fire nearby and he'll get cooked, no way he can run anymore. 

He's absolutely sure he's going to die when someone smacks him, too sluggish to react, before he figures he's been smacked on the butt. Right. David comes up from under the dust in true undead fashion, just to his right, and laughs at him. Brett is starting to believe his bunk bed mate might actually border something unnatural. 

'If you're good then help me search for injured, hm?' 

'Gonna have to go more towards our front. Everyone's gone here. I've been hearing some german up ahead but they haven't said anything in a while.' His shoulders are relaxed and he's yelling at Brett. No wonder he hasn't heard them in a while. 

'Come on then, can you move? Double back and see if you find someone. I'll be right behind.' 

David smacks him one more time before he goes, smudges the dirt on his face when he attempts to wipe the tear tracks on Brett's shoulder. 

Brett can't quite afford worry here, but he tries to trust more than pity. 

David is right, for the most part. Brett tries to be careful, tries to listen for breathing, yells in the silence just in case, just so he can be sure, and hopes he won't get shot for it. The ground becomes choppy in a few meters. The diameter of the blow is obvious, so he crawls around it, searching. His lungs burn with the effort but there's no relief, he pushes forward. Eventually his bag catches on something and his elbows give out, he eats a mouthful of dirt. 

There's a french soldier by the uniform, in arm's reach, laid out on his back, blinking, lips pressed together against the smile lines forming at the corners of his eyes. Brett feels like he's getting laughed at. He can't help it. 

'What's your name, fuckface?' 

He spills out in giggles, loud but still controlled, shoulders shaking. Not a sound for a space like this, it's bubbly, and his ears seem too big for his head. He exhales, jostles something that cuts his laughter into a sharp hiss. Not right. Brett tastes panic, sudden and unrequited. 

He should've kept David. The dumbass has one of his legs caught under the rubble, mid thigh. Not into shock yet with how he winces at Brett apologetically, and claps him on the shoulder. 

'Eddy. Your friend was really loud.'

The haze breaks some. Brett has him hooked up to saline in seconds and he's happy that he has a tourniquet on hand for once, without improvising. Two problems. The dumbass is tall and heavy like a sack of potatoes, which means there's a lot of crushed tissue under that chunk of ground. Pulling him out will be troublesome enough, but it's after, that Brett worries about. Forty minutes back to the camp if they don't fall on their faces, all the time in the world for Eddy to go into toxic shock or arrhythmia. Hypotension he can handle, what with the adrenaline shots. 

His face isn't dirty enough. Eddy grabs his forearm and tells him he's doing well. He looks fairly alive. 

It must be sunny, because his hair colors bronze, short as it is, by Brett mouth when he hauls Eddy out. He's screaming and it's disconcerting. Too busy keeping them up, with Eddy wiggling in his arms, almost doesn't notice he's being kissed. 

Red along his gums, misaligned teeth. He slips to his knees out of surprise mostly. Eddy's still screaming muffled into his mouth, but it dies down until Brett's tasting laughter again, light. They'll die out here, like idiots, some hypoventilation mixed in for good measure.

'Alright, that's enough' and Brett's being lifted by the scruff of his neck and set back onto his feet. David's face does something complicated, not quite proud, just short of disappointment. Appraising, in a way. He lifts Eddy up like he weighs nothing, half passed out but with his pulse steady. 

'Should've said if you wanted me to smack your ass harder, you know.' 

Eddy grins, the dumb fuck, and hides his face in David's upper arm. 

***

Brett doesn't quite know what to say. He has bunny teeth and _fuck_ fits them with disturbing certainty. 

His stalker is blushing. 

Brett wants to go over and tell him it's alright. Maybe hug him, but the restraint feels familiar. Orange light from the outside turns purple, then blue, it looks disjointed when he picks himself up from the floor to put back Brett's pillow on the bed. He's changed the sheets. 

_He's changed the sheets_ and Brett's stomach turns. It must show on his face. 

'I didn't! They were filthy.'

'Yeah?'

'The house is filthy.'

'Why didn't you take them to the laundromat too, huh?' 

Brett realizes from the second the words leave his mouth, that he's digging himself a hole. His stalker points to the laundry basket, filled, clothes folded and separated by color. 

A shirt falls from the top when Brett lifts it against his hip and bolts out of the apartment in his socks. The laundromat is just across the hall, a light blue room, long and suspiciously wrapped. Liminal spaces. Washing machines are on at random. Brett opens one towards the back, then the hatch is pushed closed in his nose. 

Pretty hands, moving too carefully for how they're shaped. His veins show blue. 

'Not that one.' 

'You've checked the washing machines.'

He scrunches up his nose, left corner of his mouth pushing up into his cheek, annoyed. 

'I checked your neighbors. Let me.'

Brett zones out after that. It feels like the lights are flickering, but they don't. He climbs on top of a washing machine, and breathes, and he must've stepped into something because his left sock is kind of wet. 

He leaves his knees open. The touch fries his nerves, that heated orange smell on his chin, it lingers, and the constrictive way the hug feels. Brett is alight, to the tip of his fingers, he might just die. The hands against the knobs of his spine ground him, he wants to bend. 

Nothing happens. There are teeth at the collar of his shirt and he keeps breathing. 

'What's with the oranges?' 

'Nothing. I just like them.'

***

He tells you. Something, you don't hear at first, a little too new. You remember, as always, you remember from the beginning, and he doesn't. 

He sleeps fitfully in your bed, small body stretching around the weight of his halved soul, and he dreams of evil, when his violin is too far. You wake him up, barely touch him and he tells you. 

_I never wanted to die. All those times, I've never. I just didn't know how to face you._

You feel like you might cry, and love him harder. 

***

You love some lives. You understand halfway at least, the way he needs to consume. 

You love other people too, and places, and your bodies, all of them. That first time you were a girl and still taller than him. You tend to have bunny teeth and he always has a lot of marks on him. 

There are rules. Neither of you know them. 

You grow old together, most of the time. 

When you can't, eventually, he learns to live better. You die when you first lock eyes with him in New Orleans, an accident. He doesn't follow, and you're happy for it. 

It takes a long while before he remembers again, but he's careful with himself. The bodies fit him better. 

The split was never equal, but you don't know which side is heavier. 

You begin to want more. 

***

Brett hears Eddy not sleeping, and so he doesn't either. Thinks for a while, about rolling over and tickling him until he's hard, but then they won't sleep at all, Eddy needs it, too tense, it might bleed from Brett in the end. There's no ocean to run to, no sunflower field. 

It's the first time they're _making_ something. The possibilities feel wicked inside him, after so much time, this world hasn't filled them yet.

'Brett. I want boba.' 

They still have to rehearse, they still fall out of time. If Brett doesn't focus, he forgets the size of his own hands, because he remembers all of himself, the elasticity of his joints. 

'I know, me too.'

He remembers Tchaikovsky too. Brett’s had time to think about him, four lifetimes of listening and understanding. Beauty outside Eddy, outside himself. They're for the world, but not from it, and he wants to do right by nature. 

From one, two, because Brett has wished it so. 

Eddy’s mouth, opening at his fingertips, sunflowers all turned to face him under the night sky. 

Music from the ground, drops of it at the side of his head, down his back, tomorrow, after they've played. 

Eddy kisses him.

 _Let's live._

***

Brett never stops dreaming about sunflowers and salt water. About violins, in another life.

**Author's Note:**

> i love soulmate au with my whole being, but this is. something. i call it soulmate, but i dunno. it's made up of hate and stubbornness to make it pretty, because it's for you. 
> 
> it's soup-shaped :) my only mention is that salem is near boston. crush syndrome is also a fun thing.
> 
> i hope it reads comforting and not too sad, because i never mean to do that. they just love each other and one life isn't enough for that. (plus, as a soul with two halves, how do you touch?) 
> 
> if you haven't had an orange today, go for it, it slaps. merry christmas my dudes.


End file.
